Step 11-12: More details are added (an eye and a beak are drawn into the tails), and each bird becomes a fish.Ī similar, but more complex process, is found in "Metamorphosis II", which is the larges Escher print (20 cm high, and 4 meters long) - see above.Step 9-10: Details are added to the white regions also, to signify birds.Step 8: Details are added to the black regions to signify birds.Now the shape is filled with more and more details. The shape arrived at in step 7 is preserved until the end. Step 6-7: There is a progressive alternation, not in the nature or position of the bulges, but in their size.Step 5: The boundaries of the parallelograms are changing, in such a way that an outward bulge on one side is balanced with an equal-sized inward bulge in the opposite side.Step 1-4: The surface is divided into (black and white) parallelograms.We will use his "Regular division of the plane I" (1957) to explain all the steps.įig 6: A drawing showing the creation of a metamorphosis But most of the prints display not only metamorphoses, but also a cycle (like "Cycle" (1938)).įig 5: "Metamorphosis II" (woodcut, 1939-1940) - split in twoĮscher explains in his book "Plane Tessellations" (1958) the way how he brings a metamorphosis into being. Some examples are: "Metamorphosis I" (1937), "Day and Night" (1938), "Metamorphosis II" (1939). The metamorphoses consist of abstract shapes changing into sharply defined concrete forms, and then changing back again (a bird changing into a fish, a lizard into a honeycomb). The most use of periodic surface-division is found in two themes: metamorphosis and cycles. First note that for Escher tessellations were just a means to an end, they were never produced as a main theme. If you want to play and make your own tessellations, here is a great site: We will show you here the steps done by Escher to create one of his "Metamorphosis". Making a Tessellation and a Metamorphosis A particular characteristic of Escher's tessellation is that he chooses motifs that represent concrete objects or beings. Escher discovered all these possibilities without any previous mathematical knowledge. Each groups admits only some kinds of shifts whereby they map onto themselves (some admit only translation, others translation and reflection etc.). There are 17 different groups of patters. Also if we do a reflection about the line PQ, the pattern remains the same.įig 4: Possible movements in a flat surface (translation, rotation, reflection)Ī pattern can be made to map to itself by means of translation, rotation, reflection and glide reflection. We can also turn the duplicate through 60 degrees about the point C, and we notice that again it covers the original pattern exactly. If we shift the whole plane over the distance AB, it will cover the underlying pattern once again. The whole surface is covered with equilateral triangles. In the next figure, there is a simple design. He build his own system and wrote about it in 19. He read books about ornamentation, and mathematical treatises he could not understand, although he liked and used the illustrations they had. He made copies, together with his wife, of the Moorish tessellations, and on his return home he studied them closely. For the second time he was impressed by the enormous possibilities lying in the division of a plane surface. But in 1936, accompanied by his wife, he paid another visit to the Alhambra. He wasn't satisfied by his results, so for 10 years he wasn't interested anymore in this topic. He made his own sketches, as one can see in the next figure:įig 3: Sketches made in the Alhambra, pencil and coloured crayon (1936) Then, in 1926, having some acquaintance with the Alhambra on the occasion of a brief visit, Escher was impressed by the Moorish frescos, although not all of them had figures that are true tessellations. The heads have a theatrical air about them, false, unreal, "fin du siècle". Eight different heads are shown, four of them right way up, and four upside down. The most detailed and fully developed production from this period is the woodcut "Eight Heads" (1922). The idea of covering the entire surface with figures was not due to the influence of his mentor. He had a predisposition to the discovery and application of the priciples of tessellation, as it can be seen from early works (while he was studying under de Merquita in Haarlem). Here is one of his first attempts:įig 1: First attempt at regular division of a plane, with imaginary animals (1926 or 1927) He himself was saying that: "it is the richest source of inspiration that I have ever tapped, and it has by no means dried up yet". No other theme has been as popular in Escher's work as the periodic drawing division, which is related to the mathematical concept of tesselation of the plane. Escher's Tessellations of the plane, Section 8
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